Have We Just Gotten Closer To A Cure For HIV?

A cure for HIV/AIDs has long been on the wish-list of not only sufferers but researchers and sexually-active people around the world. In the last four decades, we've seen huge improvements in the treatment of the incurable disease. But now scientists out of Hong Kong have made a breakthrough in the STD space.

Researchers from the University of Hong Kong's AIDS Institute and Department of Microbiology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine have invented a universal anitbody drug to tackle HIV/AIDS in another promising development to eventually discovering a cure.

Published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, the team engineered a neutralising antibody, universally effective "not only against all genetically divergent global HIV-1 strains tested but also promoting the elimination of latently infected cells in a humanised mouse model."

While AIDS remains an incurable disease, the new research can lead to an effective vaccine or a therapeutic cure.